André Blais is a Professor of Political Science at Université de Montréal. As a specialist in the study of elections, he has interests in the fields of voting behaviour, public opinion, electoral systems, and political participation. As well as exploring the behaviour of voters and parties during 26 elections held in 5 countries through the Making Electoral Democracy Work (MEDW) Project, Professor Blais also researches the comparative behaviour of voters and parties in the context of regional, national, and European elections. His work makes use of a variety of quantitative methods, such as surveys and experiments. He is the Chair of Electoral Studies at Université de Montréal.

Axis 2: Practicing Citizenship in a Skeptical World - The practice of democratic citizenship is undergoing a multifaceted transition. There are fundamental changes in conceptions of democratic citizenship and in its practice as well as the targets of citizen action. Scepticism about representative democracy as a system of governance is growing and citizens across established democracies are withdrawing from politics. Their perception about the political world is impacted by transformations in the news media practices and by online content, including social media. Voting and party politics have been the basis of conventional interpretations of citizenship, but there is ample evidence that this conception is much too limited. New forms of communication are providing citizens with novel ways to gather information and to engage in politics.

Axis 3: Representing and Governing Citizens in Critical Times - After learning and practicing democratic citizenship, the next critical steps are representation and governance. Democratic institutions are key elements. They shape the norms and incentives for active citizenship and they link citizens and their representatives in ways that foster accountability, legitimacy and representation. In Québec and Canada, as well as in other countries, confidence of citizens toward the institutions is low, as many dislike the way that members of parliaments behave and consider that politicians dont honour their promises, hence various political endeavours to reform these institutions. Research on this axis will focus on the role of electoral systems, parliaments, parliamentary debates, and political parties.

Alexandra Manoliu, PhD(Start: 2013)The main interest of the thesis will be how political TV shows (represented by series like Scandal, House of Cards, etc) can influence and change the perception of the viewers upon politics.
It will mostly follow the line of the by-product-learning, trying to see how much real political information will remain at the end for the people watching these kind of shows, with no intention whatsoever to gain political knowledge or because they are interested in politics.
The interest is to see how the degree of drama, incivility, exaggeration that is a norm for these kind of shows is affecting the viewers and their opinion about real-life politics. (seeing the political games, blackmail in the White House, puppets-presidents will make them more negative in their considerations, or are they able to make the difference between reality and fiction).